Alan Wake's American Nightmare

Alan Wake's American Nightmare

ALAN WAKE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE ESD. A thrilling new storyline, hordes of creepy enemies, serious firepower and beautiful Arizona locations, combined with a fun and challenging new game mode.

Overview

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Alan Wake's American Nightmare is a third-person psychological-horror action-adventure game developed by Remedy and published by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade) on February 22, 2012. It was later ported (with help from Nitro) to the PC as both a self-published downloadable title (released via Steam in North America on May 22, 2012) and a retail title (in Europe by Nordic on June 29, 2012).

A spin-off of the original Alan Wake, the game is stylized as an episode of the in-universe fictional television series Night Springs (a parody of The Twilight Zone) set sometime after the events of the original game. Players reprise the role of Alan Wake (known in the game by the narrator as the "Champion of Light"), a best-selling novelist who, in a twisted series of events, ends up in the fictional rural town of Night Springs, Arizona. When Alan's evil doppelganger, Mr. Scratch (known in the game by the narrator as the "Herald of Darkness") unleashes the forces of darkness (determined to take away everything that Alan loves), he must find a way to alter reality and foil the doppelganger, unaware that Mr. Scratch has a trick up his sleeve.

Unlike the original game, which had a heavy focus on atmosphere and themes of melancholy, Alan Wake's American Nightmare is more light-hearted (with themes of low-budget sci-fi horror films). The game is also more heavily focused on combat, refining the gameplay found in the original while adding a variety of new weapons (including a nailgun, a crossbow, and a fully-automatic shotgun) and new forms of Taken to fight (such as the Splitter, who splits into two as you shine a light on it). The game also features a new survival mode (titled Arcade Action), where players must fight numerous waves of Taken for ten minutes ("until dawn") in an enclosed space (with weapons and equipment scattered around).

Gameplay

Light is the player's most valued ally in American Nightmare, not only is it used as a deterrent to keep the taken at bay, streetlights can be found all over that are used as checkpoints that save progress and heal the player's health.

The taken are cloaked in darkness which they use as their shield, this is where the flashlight comes into play, using the flashlight on a taken will eventually remove their shielding, albeit the time varies depending on the enemy type, once weakened the player is able to finally destroy them with their primary weapon. That's not to say this is the only means of dealing with enemies, throwing a flash bang grenade at a group of taken will instantly weaken them, handheld flares can also be used to give the player breathing room, and finally the flare gun, which will destroy most enemies upon impact.

Manuscript pages make a return (along with radios and televisions), filling in more of the backstory of Alan Wake, and characters in the game, these pages are read aloud by Alan himself. That's not to say this is the only purpose of these pages, in addition to fleshing out the lore of the game they are also used for unlocking cases which can be discovered in the three areas featured in the game. Each case contains a unique weapon, from an assault rifle to a combat shotgun. There are 53 manuscript pages in the game.

System Requirements